


The Black Slate

by Paranormal_Shitness



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: 1889, Daddy Kink, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fanart, Gay Historical Erotica, Heavy Racism, Interrogation, M/M, Manifest Destiny Bullshit, Mind Break, Nonconsensual BDSM, Pre-Canon, Pre-Wounded Knee, References To Residential Schools, References to the budding Military Leather scene, Religious Psychological Warfare, Slate Was A Gay Leather Daddy Before It Was Cool, Slow Burn, Social Programming, Torture, Underage Character, Vague Pet Play Dynamics, Western frontier, brain washing, historical fiction - Freeform, military dynamics, semi public masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-01-24 15:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18574177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paranormal_Shitness/pseuds/Paranormal_Shitness
Summary: When Private Booker DeWitt of the 1st Dakota Cavalry is separated from his Company within the disputed territory of the Black Hills enroute to reinforce the 7th at Forth Lincoln, he finds Sergeant Cornelius Slate is the only remaining key to his salvation. But can Booker play the game well enough to win his freedom?





	1. In The Pines

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a culmination of a lot of the research I’ve been doing lately and only really has a plot because I needed a thought exercise to structure that information into something applicable. This is more concerned with historical accuracy than canonicity due to timey wimey bullshit meaning I’ve got a lot of leeway in canon. Tags will be added as necissary.

It was August. Late in the year as the summer began to dye the territory the sort of golden brown one would expect of a particularly well roasted bird. Their orders came down through the trickle down information economy that was the chain of command, handed over with a heavy wax seal. The insistence they ride out as reinforcements for the 7th.

Private Booker DeWitt had no choice in answering the summons. His lack of experience be damned, he was the only man in the 1st Dakota Cavalry known to speak a lick of Sioux. As such he was the only man they had able to escort a party through such hostile territory. He would have to go.

From their stationing in Bon Homme, they stood directly on the opposite side of The Black Hills from Fort Lincoln which had been held and maintained by General Custer’s 7th since sometime before the Battle of Little Bighorn. Likely longer than Booker himself had even been alive. 

He’d heard stories about the 7th all his life. Legends similar to those told about hungry wolves. Bayonets at the ends of their muzzles sharp as teeth. But in all that time he had somehow managed to avoid seeing any of them up close.

His things all fit neatly into Tantrum’s saddlebags and they found themselves a company of forty men set out in the near morning hours. Most were near green as Booker himself, the eldest having ridden with the Company only three years. 

By measure of their leading man, Captain John Jacob Hennely, it was a week ride round the Black Hills and he’d have taken it if he’d have found he’d have to. But on his account, as DeWitt rode with them, a genuine civilized savage, they might as well cut the time down. After all, it was only two days if they took themselves up through the Black Hills proper.

This had been subject of much arguing as they rode but even still Bon Homme was not so far from the foot of those high forests as a half day’s good heading and before the men had settled into any formal agreement, they had reached the rising tide of that green sea.

‘Private,’ the Captain barked, pointing down a deer trail that lead into the tree line, ‘You ride ahead. Use those keen senses of yours to secure our safe passage.’

Booker flipped his hat off his head so it hung by it’s strings on the back of his neck and brought Tantrum round easy. Stupid as his orders came they were orders all the same. Tantrum stepped light for such a large animal and Booker himself may have been thunder before the lightning but he hoped the animal would correct for any of his mistakes. 

Mysteries be willing.

The black trees swam up around him. Cherubs at the gate of a sacred but untended garden. Sentinels that watched his passage with silent judgement. It set Booker into the same fraying of nerves he felt on stepping foot in church or chapel. The pines started sparse but grew thicker in their spacing quickly so Booker found himself out of sight within a matter of long minutes. And after just a few more, he found the boughs of pine needles grew in on each other in so tight a knit that they began to soak in the sound around them. 

He drew Tantrum up to a standstill. They stood as one on the deer trail, undergrowth brushing the soles of Booker’s boots where they rested in the stirrups. Silence fell as a fur stole around his shoulders and whispered deafening nothings in his ear with its skinned lips. These were the sacred halls he had lived in once in his infancy. When his mother had still breathed and he’d had a home. This was the territory he’d wandered as a little child. But he could no more remember it than he could remember his mother’s face now.  
A twig snapped high in a tree behind him and he turned to find a little bird staring down at him with mean eyes but nothing more dared to make itself known in the quiet. 

Carefully, Booker brought Tantrum around and rode back out to meet the men.

‘Looks well,’ he reported to the anxious face of the Captain who nodded with all the courage he could muster and marched them on single file, Booker a reluctant lead. 

‘Grew up here, did you, Private?’ The Captain asked, conversationally.

Booker nodded his head. ‘Not for long.’ He answered, voice strangely muffled between the trees, ‘I was young when the war broke out.’

The birds went quiet at the sound of their hoof-falls along the long corridor of the trail. Squirrels ran back up into their trees with great anxiety.

‘Quite young indeed.’ The Captain said. ‘You must have been a tiny thing. No more than five or six judging by your complexion.’

Booker grunted an agreement. He’d been two. Thereby his memory of the events in question was damn-near non existent. 

‘I would think you’d find it nostalgic,’ the man continued.

Booker found himself less intrigued by this. They’d now come what he assumed was near twice the distance he’d been on his own and he was much more concerned about listening ahead than listening behind to the sound of the Captain’s prattle.

He held up a hand, palm flat to the wind and immediately the next words died on the man’s lips.

‘What is it?’ He asked instead. ‘Have your keen, Indian ears detected hostility in the brush?’

Booker heaved a slow sigh. ‘No. I just figured I’d continue upon the job you set for me and scout a bit further ahead.’

‘Oh, yes,’ the man agreed. ‘Alright.’

It was safer he told himself as he urged Tantrum forward. He was doing his job. Ensuring the men with him would get where they were going safely. He was not avoiding his command for selfish reasons. It would not negatively affect those in his company for him to go about his due diligence. As such, this was how he maintained operations as the later half of the day grew into its old age and died with the light behind the canopy of Lodgepole and Spruce.

The hills began slow at first before arching up into steep paths, trees so thick on their slopes they had to trek nose to tail all the way. Booker rode ahead no fewer than four dozen times before it became too dark to reliably continue. After a while of toiling on in desperation, booker lead them to a small clearing carpeted with bedstraw and dogbane and Captain Hennely finally ordered them to bed down.

‘We maintain our heading North by Northwest,’ the Captain explained over the fire as the men began to draw up a meager supper from what little rations they had been provided.

Booker made valiant attempt to drown him out under the routine of pitching his tent but this only did so much. There were only so many stakes to hammer and so much line to thread before he’d finished the task. 

‘As such we will proceed in the morning as we have so far and by sundown tomorrow we should be marshaling up at Fort Lincoln with hot meals and warm beds.’

‘Not how I heard it,’ Private Greene cut in. 

A quiet fell over the camp and Booker stopped adjusting his rope work for the dozenth time to pay his attention fully.

The captain stood, map folded in one hand, a pewter mug in the other, face lit beneath by the warm glow of the flame, staring at Greene with utter incredulity. ‘Pardon me?’ He asked.

‘Not how I heard it,’ Greene reiterated. 

‘Well how did you hear it?’

Greene wrinkled his nose left and he wrinkled his nose right then he stood up and spat a dark streak of tobacco down on the grass between them. ‘Well how heard it is them boys in the 7th been stirring up more trouble with the natives and the only reason they’re asking our sorry asses for reinforcements is they’re getting their sorry asses whooped again.’

The Captain shook his head in disbelief. ‘Is that true, Private DeWitt?’ He asked.

Silence fell over the gathering of them again. Thirty nine pairs of eyes landed on Booker who finished tying down his tent once more and sat back to glare at them all. 

‘Well how in fuck should I know?’ He asked. 

‘Well you’re a Man of the Tribe,’ the Captain insisted.

Booker took a deep breath. ‘Hardly and a half am I to be considered a “Man of the Tribe”, Sir. I’ve been living civilized since I was little more than eight years old so if you’d excuse the hell out of me I’d like to be kept out of politics I’ve got no reckoning for. You got questions, pose them to Greene. Man seems a hell of a lot more knowledgable than I am.’

Of course Captain Hennely was not happy to hear him say this but being as Booker could care no less about anything more than what the man had to say he rolled his bedroll out and let his tent flap fall shut so he was visually removed from the confrontation. Somehow, that was all he needed to find peace and quiet that night. 

He woke in the morning as the sun began to warm the edges of the sky and set about breaking camp just as everyone around him was. This simple structure and camaraderie had been the truth of the reason Booker enlisted. Something he hadn’t known he would miss when he ran away from Standing Rock Industrial Institute, not knowing he wouldn’t be able to go back.

They all ate a quick breakfast of crackers and jerky, passing around much more plentiful rations of brandy until everyone was in a cheery enough disposition to mount up.

‘And DeWitt you will take point again,’ the Captain informed them.

‘Alright,’ Booker said instead of arguing. ‘Then you wait here and I’ll ride ahead to make sure we won’t run into any hostiles.’

‘Good man,’ Captain Hennely told him.

Naturally. But he might as well have said ‘good boy’ as though speaking to a dog with the tone he used. 

Booker brought Tantrum around and trotted him up another deer path on the other side of the clearing. This one was wider as though it was more commonly used and the soft, broad leaves of Bur Oaks stretched out in odd places above it. The sun climbed slowly higher in the sky as Booker rode up a low slope onto a ridge. Here the forest floor stood more barren as though Horses were left to graze on the low foliage regularly but he saw no signs of recent passage. Assured in such a finding, he figured he’d gone far enough and ought to turn himself around. It was safe to hail his company.

Tantrum huffed a small annoyance as he reigned the horse back and Booker blinked into the low lit world around him, trying to discern which way exactly he’d come. Along the path with oak trees, he thought but when he looked there were oak trees all around. This was irksome. A certain annoyance on an already perilous day. But he knew he’d been headed Northward and by that measure could now guess he was facing South. Staunchly, he urged Tantrum forward, certain the horse would remember what he did not but the animal whickered mournfully, took a single step and froze as though he too had lost the trail.

‘Shit,’ Booker swore to himself. 

He made a nervous grab for his saddlebags where he had a compass amongst his supplies only to find they weren’t there. Tantrum’s flank stood bare of any essentials save his tent and bedroll.

‘Fuck,’ he said and then he found a few choice words in his other tongue but he could only swear for so long. 

Soon enough, he sat in silence staring at Tantrum’s mane with no knowhow on how to proceed. 

‘Just git,’ he decided finally, digging his heels stubbornly into the animal’s sides. 

They walked aimless. Deer trails criss crossed the forest in all directions around them and even as Booker tried to keep himself straight, he found himself coming to obstacles which forced him to turn this way or that until he had no rightful way of seeing which direction he may be pointed. 

Something was wrong, he knew. If he didn’t get back to he men they’d be alone and helpless in this hostile territory with no translator to make treaty with native forces. Complete sitting ducks. 

He came on a small stream and stopped in an attempt to figure which direction it ran. He hadn’t seen a stream on the way in but water was always a good way by which to gain one’s bearings in the wilderness. This, at least, he knew. 

Tantrum took a hearty drink and found a snack on some nearby cowparsnip as Booker crouched along the stream bed peering up one way then down the other. 

‘You reckon they’re down that way?’ He asked the horse.

Tantrum huffed and munched the parsnip but did not answer. 

‘Saucy shit,’ Booker chided. ‘Maybe if we got to higher ground we’d be able to spot that clearing we bedded down in.’

Tantrum was indifferent to this suggestion so Booker figured it was probably the best bet he had left. 

They’d run up against the side of a hill that rose as more of a mountain, planes of sheer rock reaching skyward on one side while steep slopes lead up the other. Deer trails ran up it and down it and Booker followed them, looping Tantrum one way then the other between the pines, careful of the pitfalls beneath their roots until he could see a good way out over the hills. 

In all its rolling splendor, the southern tip of the mountain range fell dark with green needles all around him but he could see no sign of any meadow clearings or camps. No group of men forty strong.

Booker grabbed his hat from around his neck and slapped it down on Tantrum’s mane but the gelding didn’t so much as flinch. He seemed to understand their predicament peculiarly well. The horse stood now, ears pricked and nostrils wide, legs straight at attention, peering into the distance just as Booker himself had done.

‘We’ll find ‘em,’ he assured, more nervous himself than he’d like to let on.

He gave a generous push with his heels to urge the beast back down the slope and they’d taken not a step but only one when a sudden cracking sound rang out around them. First one side then the other. A chorus as if a dozen horses had set upon them from nowhere out of the underbrush.

Booker pulled up on the reins as Tantrum let out a hoarse bray in his nerves to flee. They froze.

Just as sudden as it had broken, quiet fell again. Booker stared around them, left hand laid covetous along the pistol in his belt but nothing happened. The forest was still as it had been.

‘Come on,’ he told the horse, urging him forward once more.

It was a quiet sound this time. Something like a single delicate pluck of a guitar string and an exhale but the mere impression of that sound struck something deep, nearly instinctual in his mind. 

Danger.

He ducked down low along Tantrum’s back, pulling the reins down and out to the side with both hands so the beast was forced do the same. And the next beet of the sound, the one that some part of him had known upon the instance he heard it would inevitably follow, reverberated above them some bare feet to their right. The thunk of an arrow finding its mark in a tree. 

Booker saw the world in fragments between the blinking of his eyes as he turned to stare at it. At first he saw the image distantly, as if it had no real meaning or were entirely common place. It wasn‘t ‘til he heard the string stretch back again that he truly understood. 

‘Git!’ He shouted into Tantrum’s ear at the same time he kicked the animal forward and true to form the beast launched into as near a gallop as he could in such quarters.

Hoofbeats rung up around them instantly. Dumb as he was, distracted as he’d been trying to find his way back, Booker had let them be cornered. Which he knew now they would certainly both face consequences for.

Nervous in his plight, the though occurred to him to call out for peace. To use that little Sioux left on his rusty tongue to buy himself some pardon but his pursuers did not answer him. Nor did they seem to listen. 

Out of the corner of his eyes he could see them gaining as he reached more level ground. Silent as they rode, horses striving hard and fast with thick muscles and shiny coats.

Tantrum screamed as the advancing hostiles ran them into a stand of trees and Booker reached for his rifle but they were on him before he could turn to even aim. There was an impact along his left side. Pain lanced up his shoulder. He pitched, sliding sideways out of the saddle and landed amongst the debris of dead leaves and lost twigs. Crunched and smashed in face first so his chin struck rock and his cheek squelched into damp soil.

He had only enough time to brace himself on the ground in an attempt to push himself back up. Then Tantrum reared, dragging him up by the foot. Booker swore from blue to Sioux as his ankle twisted in the stirrup. He could hear the commotion around them but could not crane to see it tangled like he was with Tantrum living to his namesake. Under his own horse’s screaming he could hear the hoof-fall of his aggressors all around him, feel it in the ground as they circled in closer. 

A boot landed by his head. Booker tried to turn to see who wore it but the hand was over his face before he could manage. He could taste some foreign acid, smell it wafting into his nose thick enough to make him gag one moment. Then nothing. The world faded out of view and he felt entirely peaceful.

—

Someone was laughing.

It wasn’t a laugh Booker knew. Not one of the other Privates he’d trained up with or even one of the officers. He frowned at the sound of it, angry to be woken from his sleep, only to find his entire head ached with the exertion. 

The groan which followed this unpleasant discovery was nothing short of involuntary.

‘See that?’ The laugher asked, cackles swinging up manically. ‘See that? Son-bitch is waking up! Look at ‘im!’

Booker sucked a breath in through his nose, long and deep, struggling to open his eyes. Flashes of a rough hewn but scrawny face danced before him, snarl teeth bared in a vicious smile. Skin pale as a baby’s ass, with a black straw mustache on his lip.

‘I see him, Mos,’ another voice assured.

Booker’d have had a bead on the difference in accent alone but the dissimilarity did not end there. Where Mos’ voice was nasal and a bit grating, this second, yet unnamed individual, spoke in an even baritone, soft gravel around the edges of his self assurance implying he smoked instead of bothering with the mess of chew tobacco. 

From where Booker sat it had all the makings of a rich man’s voice.

He turned his face to his man, still struggling against whatever ether they’d drugged him with to open his eyes and said kindly, ‘Sir, I believe there’s been a mistake.’

‘Is that what you believe?’ The vague outline of a straight backed soldier asked him.

The man was wearing starched blue wool with a yellow scarf tied under his impressively oiled facial hair. Hair so black it looked to be a color intentionally kept up with. His stance was that of an army man at ease, comfortable in his environment as he took Booker in, drugged and tied to some sort of chair.

‘I’m no hostile, sir,’ Booker promised.

‘Is that so?’ asked the man.

‘Course it is otherwise I wouldn’t be saying it. This is all just a misunderstanding,’ Booker assured him.

The man offered him a pensive nod. ‘Private,’ he called.

Mos perked at the address. ‘Sergeant,’ the spaz asked in return.

‘This man seems to think we’re mistaken,’ said the Sergeant. 

‘Does he now?’ Mos asked, attention wandering back to Booker.

A sense of dread welled up in the space where Booker’s balls would have been had they not been such yellow-bellied cowards.

‘Yes,’ the Sergeant said.

‘Well that’s real funny considering we professionals have been patrolin’ these here hills for damn near eighteen years. I think we’d know an Indian when we see one.’

‘I’d be of a similar mind, Private,’ agreed the Sergeant. ‘So let me get this straight. You’re saying two cavalry soldiers with eight years riding experience between them, both seasoned by numerous conflicts with the red-skin-man, don’t know a red-skin-man when we see one?’

Booker stared between them in horror. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t-‘

‘Then you’re calling us liars,’ the Sergeant postulated.

‘I never sai-‘

‘Well there’s only two sides of the fence to see it from. Which is it?’

‘It’s neither one, sir. I am a red-skin-man,’ Booker assured him.

The Sergeant held both his hands up in a shrug, a look of befuddlement on his high boned face. ‘Then there hasn’t been any misunderstanding at all and we can continue. Right Private?’

‘Sounds damn skippy to me,’ Private Mos agreed.

‘Wait,’ Booker insisted. ‘I might got red skin but I ain’t no savage. I been to that school- you know the one! St-standing Rock Indu-‘

The harsh clap of the Private’s riding gloves cut Booker off. ‘Right!’ The man blurted, pointing at Booker like an excited child. ‘I heard’a that. It’s a school down on the reservation- teaches them wild children to act real men.’

The Sergeant hummed thoughtfully. ‘So there’s been some kind of misunderstanding,’ he offered.

‘Yes,’ Booker said, urgently.

‘But it’s not that you’re not an Indian ‘cause you are one,’ he continued.

‘Yes,’ Booker agreed again.

‘Only you can read and write and tie your shoes is that it, boy?’ The man asked, leaning down with his hands on his knees so they were at eye level like he was talking to a child. 

Booker felt the little hope he’d built up plummet back down instantly. ‘No, sir, I’m a Soldier. An American Soldier in the 1st Dakota Cavalry, Company A, Sir. I’m a patriot.’

‘A red-skin-patriot,’ the man said with amused incredulity. ‘Well I’ll be damned, Mos, you hearing this?’

‘Loud and clear Sergeant,’ Mos agreed.

Booker felt the color drain out of his face. A sense of empty dread curled cold hands around his ankles. These men were not going to be reasonable or see a lick of sense. They’d already made their minds up as to who he was and there was nothing he could do to persuade them he wasn’t a threat.

The Sergeant let out a loud bark of laughter, sending Private Mos back into his giggling fits. He laughed so hard, his breath fanned out on Booker’s face. Politely, Private Booker DeWitt, civilized Indian in employ of the 1st Dakota Cavalry, Company A, fought the urge to wrinkle his nose at the smell of stale tobacco smoke and brandy mixed with that old mouth-tar a working man got.

‘Well that don’t mean shit to me other than you got no backbone or sense of loyalty,’ the Man explained.

‘Where’s my horse?’ Booker asked.

‘What horse?’ Private Mos retorted. ‘You ain’t had a horse but that mule we put down when we caught you.’

It came over him as a physical sensation rather than an emotion. Hot anger, so red and frantic in his veins that it was nothing but an uncontrollable kinetic thrum under his skin. His arms slammed against their bindings and the legs of the chair he sat on screeched on the hard floor as the spasm came on till he was shaking with his own impotent rage.

‘Aw shit, Mos, you’ve upset him,’ the Sergeant remarked calmly as he returned to his full standing height.

‘That was thirteen hundred pounds of warmblooded mustang geld with a good head on its shoulders and a ballsy attitude, that animal was worth its weight in any currency. If you truly did kill him I demand full reparation for the crime,’ he hissed.

‘It’s a crime to kill a wild animal now, is it?’ The Sergeant asked

‘That- Weren’t!- no wild animal, Sir! That mount belonged to the Government of America’s United States. It belonged to the Militia of the 1st Dakota Cavalry, most specifically to its Company A and finally to me! Ever since his capture and subsequent breaking when he was issued into my care!’ Booker argued.

‘Seems to me the Indian is growing hostile, Mos,’ the Sergeant remarked cooly. ‘See that’s the trouble with thinking you can train these kinds of animals up better. Anyone so much as looks at them wrong and boom,’ he snapped his fingers in front of Booker’s face, ‘they revert.’

Booker took a deep breath in through his mouth and let it rattle out his nose, counting the seconds.

‘You see,’ the man continued. ‘These savages are no different than pack animals. They’re like horses or Negroes. You can’t train them to do anything other than fear you and respect your dominance as you take your rightful place on their back.’

Booker squeezed his eyes shut. The sheen of sweat that had slowly welled up along his hairline began to weep for the inhumanity of his current condition, running hot and salty along his brow, into his eyelashes but it offered him no comfort.

‘Ain’t that right, boy?’ Asked the Sergeant.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Booker told him. 

‘You wouldn’t?’

‘No, sir. I ain’t no savage,’ Booker insisted.

‘Sounds like the kind of thing a savage might say,’ the Sergeant said. 

The man turned his back then, seeming to think to himself. He craned his head to the ceiling and cradled his chin in his hand, rocking pensively from one foot to the other. 

‘What do you think Mos?’ He asked after several long minutes. ‘If you teach a monkey to talk what do you have?’

‘Decent sideshow attraction?’ Mos suggested.

The Sergeant gave an indulgent chuckle to this. ‘Well yes, but at the end of the day it’s still just a monkey, right?’

‘Suppose it would be, Sir.’

‘Yes,’ the Sergeant agreed, turning on his heel so he was face to face with Booker again. ‘Still a monkey.’ 

Booker was so angry he could taste the bile burning the back of his tongue. Every breath he took came shallow and shuddered as if he suffocated on his own bad humor to an agonizing death.

‘You’re a little red monkey, ain’t you boy?’ The Sergeant taunted.

‘No,’ Booker told him.

‘Aw come now, you got to know the truth. Say it.’

‘No.’

‘Say: “I’m a little red monkey.”’

‘No!’

‘Private, take the savage’s boots,’ the Sergeant ordered, voice as calm and collected as ever.

Instantly, Private Mos shrugged up onto his feet and crouched at Booker’s who watched in distant horror as the man pushed the ropes on his legs up and began to unlace them.

‘Why?’ He asked, voice sounding quiet and broken even to himself.

‘Bad monkeys who don’t do tricks don’t get to wear nice boots,’ the Sergeant explained. ‘Boots are for men.’

Booker’s feet settled bare on the cool wood of the floor. He stared down at them in some despairing disbelief. 

‘Do you want your boots back, Monkey?’ The Sergeant asked him.

‘No,’ Booker said. ‘Don’t need them.’

‘Exactly,’ agreed the Sergeant. ‘Monkeys don’t need boots.’

Booker thought to argue he wasn’t a monkey but he could hardly see the point any longer. Instead he stared at the bare knuckles of his toes and bit his tongue.

‘Well now that all the “misunderstandings” are out of the way and we know why we’re all here today,’ the Sergeant continued, ‘We’ve got some questions for you, Monkey.’

‘What?’ Booker asked.

This got him a chuff of amusement. ‘Oho,’ said the Sergeant, looking round at the Private. ‘Oh, he thinks he can turn it all around on us. He thinks he can ask the questions, don’t you, Monkey? You’re one pompous, stuck-up, self-centered, narcissistic, prince of the world, son-of -a-bitch, aren’t you, Monkey? You’re smarter than all us uneducated white Soldiers, aren’t you, Monkey?’

Booker rolled his lips together and crammed them up between the lines of his teeth. The anger he felt was turning to sure and steady humiliation. The kin that burned his face along with the back of his throat. 

‘Where’d you get these boots, monkey?’ The Sergeant asked as Private Mos brandished a shoe in each hand.

‘They were issued to me by the 1st Dakota Cavalry when I enlisted in Bon Homme, Sir,’ he said honestly.

‘Were they now?’ The Sergeant pressed.

‘Yes,’ Booker insisted. 

The Sergeant offered him a rueful hum. A patient quiet came over him then. He nodded slowly, continuing the slow rock he seemed so lulled by as he regarded Booker.

‘I want to believe you,’ he said, almost kindly. ‘I want to, son. I do. It’s just-‘ he sighed heavily, ‘I know for a fact you’re lying to me.’

‘But I’m not,’ Booker insisted.

‘Then how comes it we got a report yesterday about Savages ambushing our reinforcements, stealing their horses and their uniforms? Likely figuring they can ride right into Fort Lincoln on some kind of Trojan Horse,’ Private Mos demanded.

Booker looked between the two of them incredulously. ‘But that’s not true,’ he said.

‘So you _are_ calling us liars,’ the Sergeant said.

‘No, Sir! It’s just I’m one of those reinforcements and I was with them men yesterday! We didn’t see no signs of human life all that while! No one ambushed us!’

‘Oh?’ The Sergeant asked. ‘Then where are these reinforcements?’

Booker choked. ‘I-‘ he said.

‘You?’ The Sergeant parroted. 

‘I was acting as a scout for our men as I’m the only member of the company who can speak even a bit of Sioux. I rode ahead and got turned around trying to find my way back to them. Then next thing I knew a group of hostiles set on me and I woke up here,’ Booker explained. 

‘Well damn,’ the Sergeant said, nodding his head. He looked to Private Mos then back to Booker with that nod all the while then let go of a long, sigh. ‘I’ll give it to you. You’re right. You are smart.’

Booker felt his brows knit up as he attempted to comprehend this turn. 

‘For a monkey,’ the man added.

Whatever hope the comment had reinstilled in Booker shattered once more.

‘You see that story,’ he began, lingering almost shakespeareanly on a pause thereafter, ‘almost makes sense. Almost. And if I were a lesser beast myself or even a stupid man there’s a chance I might buy it. But I’m not a stupid man, Monkey.’

‘But sir, I’m not lying,’ Booker insisted.

‘No. No. Of course you aren’t, monkey,’ the man said kindly, reaching forward and running a hand over the too of Booker’s head like he was a prize dog. ‘You’re not lying. You’re just some innocent Civilized Savage trying to make a decent living on God’s green earth and this is some unfair trial. So surely some miracle will deliver you from it, no? If you are a true Christian Indian there’s no doubt God would grant so rare a race as yourself a miracle upon your asking if you just did it.’

‘What?’ Booker asked.

The pain came sharp and nasty across his face as the back of the Sergeant’s hand. Rings and all found his cheek and ripped it up against his teeth. Iron bubbled up around Booker’s gums, past his lips and onto the knees of his uniform pants, staining the blue with patches of copper-brown.

‘I said pray dammit!’ The man shouted.

Booker hardly drew a shuddering, bloody breath before the words were on his mouth as they came to his mouth now nearly as instinctually as any swear would in response to pain. ‘Our father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give me, this day, safe passage through this hostile land. Forgive me my debts as I forgive my debtors. And lead us forever not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom. And the Power. And the Glory. Forever. Amen.’

Silence fell on the little room so deafening Booker was consumed by those little sounds left in the rasp of his panicked breathing and the dripping of his blood into the wool of his pants. The soldiers before him shifted gently in their own time. Together they all waited. Booker even held his breath, continuing the prayer silently in his mind as more of a desperate plea than any true request.

Nothing happened.

His toes curled against the warming wood beneath them. Private Mos sniffed and spat on the floor. There was a scuttling like some rats in the wall and Booker’s arms were going numb slowly under the rope. He ached. Everything ached and as the long seconds ticked by, the sense of dread welled higher up in his throat until a soft whimper tugged it free.

‘That was truly heartfelt,’ the Sergeant said. 

Booker drew a breath that sounded half a sob and let it out slowly. A heavy hand lay on the top of his bowed shoulder, pushing him up more fully in his chair so he had to look up into the Sergeants bright, blue eyes. They shined with a sadistic mirth. One that found a hatred deep in Booker’s stomach and polished it for a diamond in the rough.

‘But if it’s not good enough for God,’ the man continued, shaking his head, ‘Well, it’s not good enough for me.’

‘Please,’ Booker tried.

And he saw the man’s pupils jump. Saw them yawn hungrily at him in that moment before he looked away. Before he stepped back, drawing his touch along with him.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Sergeant told him. ‘It just so happens I know you for a forked tongue liar. I know you for the snake in the grass you are. I know you’re not the soldier you say you are and though I need not present it to you, I have enough evidence to prove that reality to any of my superiors should they so ask me to, but looking at you, son. Seeing your damn face, smooth and pretty as it still may be in your boyishness, I’m not too sure they’d find anything in you to take pity on.’

‘But, Sir, what evidence could there be when I’ve done none of that?’ Booker pleaded.

‘Name and rank, soldier,’ the Sergeant demanded. 

‘Private Booker DeWitt of the 1st Dakota Cavalry, Company A, Sir!’ He called out.

The Sergeant kissed his teeth disapprovingly. ‘Private Mos is there a Private Booker DeWitt mentioned in the list of men we received at Forth Lincoln upon or request for reinforcement?’

Private Mos scurried out of sight and Booker heard a rustling of papers. Anticipation tickled in his throat behind his adamsapple as he waited but when Mos spoke he brought no relief. 

‘No sir,’ the man said and Booker felt his heart hit the floor of his pelvis. 

‘Sir, he only just hardly looked, he haven’t the right to him to be saying something like that!’ Booker insisted.

‘Are you implying Private Mos has been negligent, Monkey?’ The Sergeant demanded.

‘Sir, no, Sir- but i signed on in Bon Homme only just a few months ago! This is my first deployment! I know I’m on that paperwork! If he just looks a bit longer! Even a few seconds! He’ll see! I’m on there! He’ll see!’

The Sergeant blew a derisive huff through his nose. ‘Alright Mos,’ he said almost jokingly, ‘look again.’

Again the papers rustled. One after the other. Booker measured time by the blood soaking into his pant legs.

‘Still ain’t seen him,’ Mos said finally.

‘Hear that?’ The Sergeant asked smugly. ‘He still ain’t seen you.’

‘But, Sir, I don’t understand. I’m on those papers,’ Booker insisted.

The man’s eyes cut to him, wide under knitted black brows, nostrils flared. ‘Don’t you talk lies to me!’ He snapped.

Booker’s teeth clacked loudly as he shuttered his mouth up.

‘Private Mos, it appears to me the Monkey is not cooperating,’ the Sergeant said. ‘We’re done for now.’

Then he turned on his heel, making for some door somewhere out of Booker’s sight with Mos on his heels.

Quiet took over so totally, Booker started mapping the movements of rats in the walls. Slowly, the blood in his pants dried and then he had no way of knowing at all how much time passed. Sunlight didn’t fall into the room from any windows. He did not hear anyone come or go outside. There was no measure by which to know how long he waited before he fell into the clutches of sleep.


	2. Where The Sun Never Shines

 

  


‘Son,’ someone called to him. 

There was a brief pressure against his shoulder but it felt very distant. Far away. Likely on account of how numb he was.

‘Son, wake up,’ the man said again and this time, Booker recognized the voice as the Sergeant’s.

This association alone was enough to jolt him into partial waking. He was still in the same room tied to the same chair. His arms were numb. So was his ass and everything from his taint to the tip of his cock. 

‘Sir?’ He asked thickly, mouth dry from lack of drink.

‘Good,’ the man said, patting his head and the back of his neck. ‘Good.’

‘I’m so thirsty,’ Booker said to the man’s belt. ‘Can I have some water.’

To this, the Sergeant offered him a rueful sigh and pulled away so they could look at one another properly. ‘I wish that I could fulfill that request, Monkey,’ he said. ‘But until you tell me the truth, I’m afraid I’m unable to get permission from my superiors.’

‘I haven’t lied to you once, sir,’ Booker promised.

It was not a slap this time. The Sergeant’s hand snapped out knuckles first, cracking against Booker’s temple hard enough to snap his head around on his neck.

‘Shit,’ he hissed but the sergeant was not done. 

The man’d come up so close his lips ghosted the shell of Booker’s ear as he said, ‘Don’t you even start in on the nonsense boy. I haven’t got the time.’

‘I-‘ Booker started.

But he didn’t get to finish because the Sergeant kicked his chair over. And the floor rushed up all the sudden, slammed into his forearms tied behind his back so that even numb as they were he screamed and writhed. 

‘For the love of fucking God!’ Booker shouted.

‘That really what you wanna say to me?’ The Sergeant demanded.

The man was tall. With Booker on his back he loomed against the lamps burning continuous on the walls. Booker could remember many men, teachers, disciplinarians, uncles, cousins, grandfathers, elders who had loomed over him like that in his childhood and in that moment this man was every one of them simultaneously.

Booker shouted. That terrified kind of shout a boy gives. A holler half way to a scream it was simply too embarrassed to fully become. His chest fluttered under his shirt where his jacket fell open, clavicles bared at the collar, drawing the Sergeant’s eye as the floor pressed bruises into his wrists and elbows.

‘Don’t you wanna lay one of those terrible Indian curses on me? Make me tremble before your warrior might? Huh?’ The man demanded.

‘Fuck you,’ Booker spat. 

The pain in his arms was forcing him to work against his bonds, driving him to desperation so much that he could not hold still. The Sergeant picked up a heavy boot and laid it along the line of Booker’s sternum so the added weight held him on his abused arms.

‘Fu-uck!’ He shouted.

And calmly, the Sergeant asked, ‘Don’t you want to pray to your heathen gods?’

‘Pick one!’ Booker told him.

‘Do it,’ the Sergeant demanded, pressing his weight down further so Booker’s breath came in sputtered gasps. ‘Use your witchcraft and smite me, you red-skin-monster.’

‘I’m gonna kill you!’ Booker growled.

‘Yeah? You gonna use those evil eyes of yours to stop my heart? Rupture my bowels?’the Sergeant demanded.

Booker thrashed and gasped for breath beneath him. ‘No I’m gonna use my hands to gut you like the pig you are!’

The Sergeant gave him a smile. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said and lifted his weight.

The sigh of relief that tore out of Booker’s chest was an understatement but the pain did not end with his lungs filling so much as it sharpened. ‘Pick me up,’ he begged. ‘Please.’

‘Well how can I refuse when you ask so nice?’ The Sergeant said.

Booker actually groaned as the pressure came off his arms.

‘Feel good?’ The Sergeant asked.

‘Yes,’ Booker admitted resentfully which earned him a warning glare sharp enough to make him tack on a wan, ‘Thank you.’

‘Much obliged, Monkey,’ the man answered. 

Booker took deep breaths to ease the lingering pain in his arms as he listened to footfalls circle him. Slowly and with great personal confidence, the man strayed to a stop before Booker, facing him, arms akimbo. Suddenly a boyish grin overtook the man’s facial hair with an urge to encroach on his cheeks.

‘You notice that yet?’ He asked and inclined his head down towards Booker’s groin.

Booker followed his suggestion downward, only to come face to face with the upsetting sight of a particularly inconvenient case of morning wood. ‘Ga-Jesus,’ he swore under his breath. His cheeks burned so hot he’d have feared a rash if the circumstances differed. 

‘Needing a bit of help there, boy?’ The man asked him.

The spit in Booker’s mouth was thick. He swallowed uselessly against it. ‘Just haven’t peed in a while,’ he argued. ‘That’s all.’

‘Oh I’ll bet, Monkey,’ the Sergeant told him, leaning down against his knees again. ‘Tell you what,’ he continued. ‘You answer my questions right and I’ll untie your arms so you can have a moment to sort out your little predicament.’

‘Okay,’ Booker hazarded. 

‘Right then. You say you’re one of our men. On your first deployment from Bon Homme. When did you leave camp?’

‘Just before dawn, Sir,’ Booker told him.

The Sergeant hummed appreciatively. ‘Good boy,’ he said. Then in one motion he stood up and ran a hand down the side of Booker’s sweaty face, smearing grime down his neck and onto his shirt comfortingly.

‘And when you left, who did you leave with?’ He asked.

Booker searched his brain. ‘I don’t know the names of all thirty nine men who were with me, Sir. I’d only just met about half,’ he admitted.

‘Fair enough,’ the Sergeant told him. ‘Who was in command?’

‘Captain John Jacob Hennely,’ Booker answered.

‘Hennely’s still riding with the 1st Dakota?’ The Sergeant asked. ‘Right ass of a man, Hennely,’ he said.

Booker couldn’t help the chuckle that squeezed past his lips.

The sergeant regarded him kindly. ‘Alright, son, you pass,’ he said. ‘I’ll untie your arms now. You got three minutes to do your business and piss.’

‘Thank you, Sir,’ Booker said gratefully.

‘I’d bet anything you’ll say that again once I’m done,’ The sergeant said as he made his way step by step back around out of Booker’s sight.

The ropes came loose slowly. Bit by agonizing bit. Booker hissed as they peeled out of the trenches they’d worried across the flesh of his arms. Line after line pulled away painfully slow. The sergeant pooled them over his hand in a perfect circle as he went, worrying red welts with his fingers on occasion so Booker gasped and flinched.

‘How’s that then?’ He asked when he had finished and stood rubbing the life back into The deadened appendages he’d freed.

‘Thank you,’ Booker told him and meant it. He expected the man to leave and give him privacy once more but he didn’t. 

Instead, he stood there, hands on the spooled rope, as if patiently waiting for Booker to start.

‘Go on then, you only got so long,’ he said when Booker gawked at him.

An army man followed an order. A real soldier did as told. So Booker did as he was told. His hands were still clumsy and numb enough they felt odd. Almost like a stranger’s. Lacking as much dexterity as he did in the moment, he was forced to use both like some inexperienced thirteen year old squeezing out his first dollop of fun.

And all the while, the Sergeant watched him attend his need, eyes following the progress his fingers made. He tried not to think about it. Tried to think about that what he’d usually think about. There’d been a girl he ran into when he ran away. Pretty with full lips and a sharp wit. She’d thought he was an idiot and had told him so every chance she got. The kind of girl a boy only knew a short while but would have married in a heartbeat given the chance.

He thought of her. Thought of her hair, her pretty face, her mouth, the soft backs of her knees when her skirt rode up. And in thinking of her, he managed despite the odds. 

‘Good boy,’ the Sergeant told him matter of factly. Then he handed Booker a pot and let him pee into it. ‘Now I’ve got to tie you back up.’

‘Can I at least do up my trousers, Sir?’ Booker asked.

The Sergeant chuckled warmly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Those clothes are so dirty there’s no point putting them back on you, Monkey. Matter of fact,’ here he paused, rounding Booker’s back and seized his jacket by the front hem in either hand. ‘Oughta just get you out of this now.’

‘What?’ Booker asked, but before he got a response, the Sergeant ripped his jacket down off his arms in a single fluid motion.

The patina of sweat on Booker’s skin caught the air and set him to shiver on an instant but the Sergeant wasn’t done. He reached down over Booker’s chest and grabbed the front of his shirt, ripping so the buttons popped and clattered around on the floor.

‘Stop,’ Booker pleaded as the shirt followed, but the Sergeant ignored him.

Booker could not watch what he did with the confiscated clothing, but it sounded as though he folded it deliberately before stepping back into view empty handed.

‘Can I have water now?’ Booker asked, hopeful his slew of good fortune hadn’t yet completely run out.

To his great dismay, the Sergeant offered him a reluctant hiss. ‘Oh, so now we’re getting entitled?’ The man asked. ‘Give a Monkey a piss and he’ll expect you to refill the tank for him, is that it?’

‘No,’ Booker tried.

‘Well I even let you have a little time to clean your gun there, Monkey. And you still wanna ask for more?’ The man demanded.

‘No, Sir. I’m just thirsty,’ Booker insisted, lips beginning to crack around the words. 

The Sergeant didn’t so much as bother to listen. ‘So I let you piss and then I gotta replace that piss for you? What kind of way is that to show gratitude?’ He continued.

Booker found himself at a loss. He was cold and thirsty. So thirsty he couldn’t bother thinking about the hunger that gnawed at the corners of his stomach or the ache in his body from sleeping in a chair bound in ropes. He felt like a child back in school. Like he’d been relegated to the dunce chair and the teacher just wouldn’t leave him alone.

‘You think that’s a good way to thank a man?’ The Sergeant continued, yanking Booker’s hands back behind him once more and beginning to lash them down to the wood slats of the chair back even tighter than they had been.

‘No, please! I’m sorry!’ Booker pleaded but the man continued to ignore any word from his mouth.

He worked quickly and roughly, muttering quiet curses about Booker’s entitlement all the while ‘til Booker couldn’t take anymore. ‘Till his wrists were raw and he couldn’t stop the tears burning the corners of his eyes from spilling. ‘Till the soft insides of his elbows were biting down hard on the top of the chair back and his fingers had gone numb again.

Booker sobbed silently into the knees of his trousers, the last remaining article of clothing he had left, as the man stormed once more from the room.

Hours ticked into minutes ticked into days. Always, the lamps on the walls burned level. Even. They did not wane or waver. Booker shuffled his right foot back and forth against the rope on his calf so that the shush of fabric on fiber provided a steady sound by which to measure some, if any, passage of time.

He tried to recall the words to some song but could only think of the fingerings for the melody. Kinetic memory that proved useless when his fingers were so far out of his reach. 

The ache in his arms had spread to his shoulders, was lancing up along his neck and throat into his head with needles for fingers. Groping down his spine to sink claws into the dimples in the small of his back. Spiking through to the front of his hips. Pooling in his knees. 

His teeth jittered with a hitherto unknown pain. The rigor of the position, a punishing force on him, only increased as unknowable eternities eeked past him. He lost his focus at some point, became too exhausted, and did not fall into a sleep so much as loose his grasp of time’s linear reality.

His eyes did not close but they stopped recording the unchanging image before them. He lost touch with the feeling of the chair pressing into his body, lost contact with everything but the world inside his mind. Like falling into a waking dream, he found himself entrenched in his own thoughts. Memories came up so real they felt present. As though he physically relived them sitting alone in that cold room. A place he found himself entirely lost in until cold water hit him like a gale force from above.

He gasped, a sucking, inhuman sort of breath, pulling the water running over his face into his mouth.

‘There you go, monkey!’ Private Mos crowed in his ear. ‘Got ya that water you wanted.’

‘Fuck,’ Booker swore, blinking around him to try and see who all had turned up for round three through the remaining drippings rolling off his eyebrows. 

‘Damn true,’ Mos agree with him.

‘Damn true,’ the Sergeant added as a third opinion.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Booker demanded. The water had finally run all out of his eyes and he could clearly see the man standing before him, uniform all drawn up in straight lines like his back. A contrast to the bow of his riding legs. 

The Sergeant smirked and pulled a cigar stub out of the chest pocket on his jacket. ‘Are you telling me you still don’t understand why you’re here, Monkey?’ He asked.

‘No!’ Booker cried. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong!’

‘You didn’t, did you?’ The Sergeant asked.

‘No. It’s like I said,’ Booker tried, calming his tone with deep steady breaths so it came out more quiet and even even if his voice still shook, ‘I was scouting ahead when I became disoriented and was separated from the men who rode with me.’

‘Last time you told us that, you said you got lost. This time you said you were disoriented. Which is it?’ The Sergeant demanded.

Booker stared at the man in utter disbelief. ‘They both mean the same thing, Sir,’ he said.

‘The men you was riding with, what Company was they from?’ Mos asked.

‘Company A of the 1st Dakota Cavalry,’ Booker answered.

‘That’s what you said yesterday,’ the Sergeant said.

‘Of course it’s what I said yesterday. I’m telling the truth,’ Booker insisted.

The Sergeant smiled at this. Then he brought the cigar to his mouth to wedge it between his teeth and reached back for a book of matches, taking his time to light one and puff the butt back into life. ‘Still playing the victim,’ he said, words carried on thick smoke.

‘Like a broken record,’ Mos agreed. 

The cold sheen on Booker’s skin had set him to shiver so bad it was slowly reminding him of the pain in his arms. He stared at his own lap in disbelief, soft dick still resting on top of his open trousers. The ridiculousness of the situation. 

Mos of course took that moment to notice his state of odd undress. He crowed a laugh, rough and cawcous in Booker’s face. ‘Well look at that, sir, this Monkey’s got his willy out,’ he said.

‘Tell me something, Monkey,’ the Sergeant said, ‘would you dress like that if you were a Soldier? Is that how Soldiers dress?’

Booker was at a complete loss for what to say. The argument that this was not how he had dressed himself seemed stupid. Moments egged the Sergeant’s superiority on as Booker labored through deep, agonizing breaths, willing his muscles to stop their shivering.

‘No,’ he finally said, teeth only just barely clattering together.

‘You ain’t no soldier,’ the Sergeant told him.

The shame of it hit Booker in the stomach so hard and so vicious he felt what was left of his body would surely cave. ‘I’m not,’ he admitted.

He wasn’t. They’d easily stripped him of that despite all the hard work he’d put in to earn the position in the first place. They took it like it was nothing. And that left him nothing. _He_ was nothing. It ate out a hollow hole in his stomach, rampaged angrily through the lower territory of his ribs and left him for dead.

‘You’re just a monkey,’ the Sergeant told him.

‘I am,’ Booker agreed. The paper of his esophagus rasped like wind through a carrion hide left to tan in the desert sun. 

‘Good Monkey,’ the Sergeant told him. ‘Private Feaster, if you would untie the savage and get him a glass of water.’

Booker blinked between the two men before him, astounded. For all there was logic in the world he could not follow whichever thread these two men had been tethered to. 

Pivate Mos followed the order on prompt, disappearing from Booker’s sight. He made short work of what the Sergeant had taken his grueling time to do last time Booker had found himself untied and within short moments, he was rubbing the feeling back through his elbows and wrists.

‘Thank you,’ he mumbled uncertainly.

Not a few moments later, the Private shoved a cup of water into his shaking hands. It stung the birch bark peel of his lips but still ran cool heaven down his throat. 

‘Thank you,’ he said again, voice stronger this time.

‘You’re welcome, Monkey,’ the Sergeant told him with an indulgent smile.

Mos stifled a snicker behind his bottle bristle mustache. He was a twitchy little man, Booker thought. An oddball and potentially an idiot but what did Booker know? They’d told him nothing other than that he was a monkey and that if he did not accept that as fact he would be punished.

‘I imagine you’re feeling a bit stiff sat there like that,’ the Sergeant said.

‘Yessir,’ Booker told him over the rim of the water cup he found himself clinging to.

‘Good,’ the Sergeant said. ‘That’s good to hear. But we’re gonna make it all a little easier on you, Monkey.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Booker said nervously. 

He got the distinct feeling that the word easy was in operative effect within the current context he found himself in. He threw a shifty glance at Mos from the corner of his eye and caught the man adjusting his pistol belt side to side. Fidgeting. 

‘Untie his feet,’ the Sergeant said and Mos instantly snapped to attention as though he had been waiting for the instruction.

A good man was a prompt man. Booker’d been told that on a number of occasions. Something along those lines. A good man is a loyal man. A man who follows orders. Who asks no questions. Tells no lies. 

The logic was so disjointed, Booker felt he had little idea what this man, the Sergeant, wanted until he’d turned his attention to Private Mos Feaster. Booker gulped the rest of his water down as he watched the man take a single knee to free his weak ankles from their binds.

He waited patiently for the order to stand and when inevitably it came, he did so without even bothering to do his trousers back up properly so they fell all the way down his legs to form a little blue lake around his feet.

‘Private, relieve this monkey of his pants,’ the Sergeant ordered. Then he held his hand out simply for Booker’s cup.

Easy. Logical. 

Booker handed the cup over, kicking his trousers from around his feet to make Mos’ job simpler. 

‘Good Monkey,’ the Sergeant said. 

Booker frowned at the floor.

‘What’s the matter?’ The man asked him. ‘You don’t like being a monkey?’

‘No sir,’ Booker admitted.

‘What do you think, Mos?’

Mos turned the concept over in his head. ‘S’pose if he’s following orders,’ he said with a shrug.

‘Alright,’ the Sergeant decided. ‘Monkeys don’t follow orders, but you do,’ he said. ‘From now on, you’ll be a dog.’

‘Thank you, Sir,’ Booker said quietly to his own limp Johnson.

‘Good dog,’ the Sergeant told him. 

And the drill began proper. Proper and ordered in a way Booker understood. 

‘Attention!’ The Sergeant barked.

Instantly, Booker corrected his posture, feet squared, arms at his sides, meeting the man’s gaze dead.

The Sergeant crowed a single ‘whoop’. ‘Well damn, Dog, you might just a soldier yet make,’ he said.

Booker felt himself swell with pride. 

‘Mos, if you would do the honors,’ the Sergeant suggested.

Booker remained sill, eyes on the Sergeant as if this were nothing more than basic training. As though he were not standing ass naked, balls to the proverbial wind as it were. Mos stepped up to the small of his back and began to wind the rope around his wrists in tight figure eights.

‘Now, while Private Feaster is so diligently working away, would you be so kind as to tell me why your company was sent out into the Black Hills?’

‘To reinforce the 7th at Fort Lincoln,’ Booker said firmly.

‘Good Dog. And who gave you that order?’

‘General Todd Issacs.’

‘And you know this because?’

‘Because I was there, Sir.’

‘Liar!’ The Sergeant shouted as he brought an open hand down across Booker’s cheek.

Booker started but the ties Mos had on his wrist were already sturdy and the man had a grip on them.

‘Where were you on the 16th?!’ The Sergeant continued.

Booker felt his knees threaten to buckle in some form of cowardice but managed to hold his ground. ‘Bon Homme, Sir.’

‘And why were you in Bon Homme?!’ The man demanded. His breath was hot on Booker’s face as Booker struggled to continue meeting his gaze. 

‘I was awaiting deployment, Sir!’

‘Bullshit you were, Dog! I don’t believe that in an instant! you trust me I know everything there is to know about what goes on in these parts! I’ve heard whispers that would turn your red cheeks crimson and curl your straight little virgin pubic hair right off your ballsack so you was just a little boy again! Don’t you try anymore bullshit lying to me when I already know where you were on the 16th!’ The Sergeant raged.

Then he leaned back out of Booker’s face and took a long drag off his cigar stub.

‘I’ll ask again,’ he said once he’d puffed enough smoke out between them Booker’s eyes began to water. ‘Why were you in Bon Homme?’

There were tears on Booker’s face now. He stared down at the floor in shame as the reality of why he had been in Bon Homme started to sink in. ‘I ran away,’ he admitted to the floor.

‘What’s that, boy?’ The Sergeant asked him.

Booker felt his lips tremble as he drew a breath in over them. His eyes stung like bees had moved in under the lids. Hot prickling dug in at the inner corners until they watered like a shamed child’s. ‘I ran away,’ he said a bit louder, a bit more firmly.

‘You ran away,’ the Sergeant said flatly. Almost as if that had been the last thing he expected to hear.

Mos gave an uneasy snicker behind him as he continued complicating the rope work on Booker’s wrists, tugging them upward slightly toward the ceiling. Booker ignored him.

The Sergeant had a look of what might have been the most distant concern on his face. As though he were watching a wolf starve. Booker’s cheeks felt hot and wet as he tore his gaze away from the man’s face once more.

‘I did,’ Booker confirmed. ‘From the school. They locked me up in a closet for three hours and the nuns didn’t even bother looking and I reckoned it was enough- I ran out- and-’ he trailed off.

‘And what, Son?’ the Sergeant asked.

‘I thought I could make it,’ Booker said and now, nearly a year after that mistake, even the words sounded stupid to him. He’d thought himself some big man. Thought himself grown. It’d been nothing but a good joke for the staff.

‘So you’re some lily toed deserter, is that it, dog?’ The Sergeant asked,

‘Yes,’ Booker agreed as Private Feaster laced the second rope under his armpits.

‘You haven’t got an ounce of loyalty in your soul,’ the Sergeant continued. ‘You try to tell me you’re a soldier when you deserted long before you’d ever even had the chance to enlist. You don’t deserve to be my dog.’

‘No!’ Booker started. He made to take a step forward but at some point when he hadn’t noticed, Mos had thrown one of the ropes up over a beam in the ceiling above him and all pulling against it did was unbalance him so he swung forward, wrenched by his arms, to spin in nervous circles on his toes.

A deep bellied bark of laughter hit him as the Sergeant moved to tip him back on his feet. ‘You want to be my dog?’ He asked, a single gloved finger pressed into the meeting of Booker’s clavicle.

‘Yes,’ Booker said because he would say anything not to go back to being a monkey.

Again the Sergeant’s pupils flashed dangerously at him. Some morse code he could not decipher. ‘Good boy,’ he man told him.

Then he flat out swallowed a mouthful of cigar smoke and blew it out through his nose like not even acid could scald the delicate sclera of his eyes and so that little smoke would burn nothing. ‘You’re dismissed, Private,’ he said to Feaster.

‘Sir,’ the man said and marched brusquely from the room.

There were several beats of silence after the door swung closed. Booker stood flat footed on the wood slats of the floor, staring at the Sergeant who stood in his heavy boots, his wool uniform. The man fixed him a nasty smile as he set about sucking the last of the cigar smoke down into his lungs. Clouds of it hung languid, shimmering luminescent in the low burn of the lamps on the walls.

Slowly, as the cigar butt burned down near out, he lifted a foot and snubbed it on the heel of his boot.

‘You think of yourself as a patriot,’ he said flatly.

‘Of course, Sir,’ Booker agreed.

The Sergeant gave him a mean appraisal, cocked his head one side then reached out so he pushed into the center of Booker’s chest with the tips of his fingers. Hard. Hard enough to make him wobble back against the rope on his arms so it scrunched up in the tender flesh of their pits and bit down with frayed teeth. Booker bounced there against the line that held him loft back onto his feet fully.

‘I could break your arms,’ the Sergeant said. Not a threat, just something he casually pointed out. 

Booker’s breath came hard like a pack animal being run in the heat. 

‘I could break you to a thousand tiny pieces and you’d never even have heard my name, dog,’ he continued.

Booker could feel that sick spit, that fear pooling around the teeth of his bottom jaw, thick and bitter.

‘You know you look real pretty like some kind of painted lady with that blood on your lips,’ the man told him then.

Booker tried to hold on through the violent change in topics. ‘What?’ He asked.

That hand whipped out against his face again, across the other cheek, raking it against his teeth until it bled once more.

‘I said you look like some fancy fucking whore,’ that voice barked in his face.

Fresh red beaded on his lips. 

‘It’s a type of lipstick,’ the man continued. 

Booker reeled. His feet were on the floor but gravity seemed to bend and buckle as though his body had warped and his head somehow was too. A fat thumb ran itself along his bottom lip, dipped past it to brush his teeth as it collected those thick drops, smeared them as a paint over the flesh there.

‘What are you gonna do to me?’ Booker asked the pregnant pause in the man’s speech.

‘I’m gonna make you snort Andrew Jackson’s pearly dick-shits, boy,’ the Sergeant told him in an utter dead pan.

It was almost enough to make him laugh if he the fires of hell weren't reaching cold up his legs and hot into his chest. ‘Just kill me,’ he said. 

The Sergeant punched him then. Right across the nose so the room blinked in and out of reality in sporadic burst, fragments of time suspended upon the edges of the impact. When it solidified again, he was staring down at the floor where his blood was beginning to pool in agonizing sploshes.

‘Get up, dog, you’re embarrassing me!’ The man shouted. ‘Can’t you even take a fucking beating?!’

‘I’m sorry, Sir,’ he found himself saying. 

The pain in his desperate arms had hit fever pitch as he hung by them and now in such suspension, the groaning of his binding came coarse as its bite. Like a victim of a hanging not shown enough mercy to be allowed to strangle, he hung by the torque of his arms in the strained sockets of his shoulders. 

‘Stand yourself up before you break, Dog,’ the man told him.

His bare feet scuffled on the floor, cock balls swinging like some strange fruits as he righted himself. Complete in his lack of dignity.

‘I’ll ask you again,’ the man said once Booker had squared himself away. ‘Why were you in Bon Homme?’

The defeat hung as heavy as a noose on his neck. ‘I told you,’ he insisted.

Those hard ringed fingers wiped whatever sacral paint had gathered on his lips clean for the split second they wrenched again across his face, before they further deepened the shredding of his gums.

Breathing was becoming increasingly difficult. His nose made high pitched wheezing sounds whenever air was unlucky enough to rattle through it and though the blood had begun to dry, it had done so thick, cutting off airflow in what little ways the inflammation didn’t.

‘Don’t give me no cheek, Dog! Why were you in Bon Homme?!’

‘I ran,’ Booker croaked to the floor. ‘From the industrial school. Lived on the streets. They wouldn’t take me back in cause they filled my bed. Drifted for a while. Hitched ride. Ended up in Bon Homme.’

He’d been hungry. Hungry and tired like now. His body had ached and he’d felt alone in the cold of it. Alone like the shit smeared across the heel of a single boot. Like a prairie dog what lost its whole family to wild fire. The army had been the only option wherein he could answer all those needs at once. Food, a bed, a unit. It hadn’t even been a choice to make.

‘Did you, now?’ The Sergeant asked.

But Booker wasn’t listening to him. He was lost in all those balms having been ripped away. Sure he didn’t have any friends in his unit but they were still his unit. He knew their faces. Knew what to expect from them. He was hungry too. Thirsty, naked and tired.

‘I want my horse,’ he said.

‘I want my horse,’ the Sergeant mocked. ‘That some kind of savage version of “I want my mommy”?’

The hot tracks of tears stayed fresh on Booker’s face. He wanted to be away from this place. Gone from it. Shut of all the noise. ‘I want my horse,’ he insisted, louder this time. So it was almost a wail. 

The rope creaked on his shoulders, wrenching them in their sockets as he doubled forward again but he ignored it. He could no longer see the Sergeant’s face, nor did he have any desire to. 

‘I want my fucking horse!’ He shouted. ‘Give me my fucking horse!’

‘Shut-up, you grass-nigger, bastard, your fucking horse is dead!’ the Sergeant shouted back at him.

Booker didn’t care. He opened his mouth and started screaming and he didn’t stop. Not for air, not for life. He let the sound of his own voice echo in the room until it reverberated back at bone grinding frequency, amplified and split by the uneven face of the wood surfaces it bounced off of.

He screamed so loud every thing the Sergeant said was just a smacking of lips as they uselessly wagged. He screamed so loud it split his own face open and blood flew out from his mouth. He screamed till the Sergeant braced one hand on his right shoulder and buried a fist under his ribs so hard he lost all the air in his lungs on a great but quiet woofing sound. And in the pressure left behind by the silence his ears imploded around the absence of the sound, plunging him into utter silence as the blows continued to hammer whatever air might have been gasped back out of his body.

And then it was over.

Booker stood there, shocked like a man who’d had a keg of powder blow in his face, ears ringing, knees weak against the binding on his arms. The world was an unsteady shade of smeared water color luminescence. One that swayed beneath him like rolling grass.

‘Why don’t you take a moment?’ The Sergeant asked him. ‘Just try and calm down, son.’ Then he turned on his heels and left with the finite clicking of a shut door.


	3. Shiver The Whole Night Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Planned on adding a fourth chapter but this wrapped up quicker than expected. Thanks for reading my thesis statement for my edgeplay degree. This may end up with a sequel.
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His knees had gone numb and rickety from the need to lock them in order to stay upright by the time the door opened again, which could have taken days by Booker’s bet. 

‘Dog,’ the Sergeant greeted.

Booker said nothing. He wanted to believe he felt nothing.

Strange fission laced through the air. Something suspended on that cool current of turbulence that rolled off the Sergeant’s movements. 

‘We’re running out of time to bother with you,’ the man continued. 

Booker held the peace of his tongue in his head like a lion in a cage.

‘See,’ a pause here, ‘we’ve managed to capture a number of your compatriots and one by one, sure enough,’ another pause.

Booker stared at the floor feeling sick, not understanding.

‘They’re turning on you, dog.’

Some part of his chest felt tight and painful. Like a fist was wrapped round it to squeeze. 

‘They’re selling you out.’

‘Fuck they ain’t,’ Booker said. ‘They ain’t real.’

The Sergeant offered him a nonplussed smile. ‘Ain’t real.’

‘Yeah. Like you. You ain’t real! You’re just the face a spider wears. You’re just another shape for a liar! ‘I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll put you the fuck down!’ Booker hollered.

The man before him drew a slow, deliberate breath through his nose and let it run over his teeth.

‘Listen,’ he said, reaching out and lacing a hand behind the back of Booker’s neck so he held their faces catty corner against one another, eyes scant to lock on each other. ‘You know I’m real.’

‘You’re some kind of hallucination,’ Booker insisted.

The Sergeant laughed at him. A wheezing sort of huff of air. That derisive sound men made toward him regularly. ‘You ever hallucinate boy?’ He asked.

‘They’re visions,’ Booker told him. 

‘Visions.’

‘You’re just a vision. You can’t really touch me,’ Booker insisted.

‘Oh I can,’ the man said. 

He stepped closer. 

The leather of his boots made a neat box around Booker’s bare feet, caged him in and held him there even more stationary than he had been. He felt as boxed as a blinded horse. Felt terrified deep down in the root of him.

The Sergeant’s thighs were hard lines against his own through the wool of his uniform pants but more than that. It wasn’t the thighs themselves or how their knees knocked against the outlines of one another based on their height difference. No. It was the line of something pressed in against the lower reaches of his abdomen. Against the top of his cock. He choked on that feeling. That presence therein.

‘Tell me I can’t touch you,’ the man dared him.

‘I-‘

‘Tell me.’

Booker’s throat seized. He felt the panic go in him like some kind of fancy thoroughbred fit to throw a race. No, he thought. No. This wasn’t- ‘You can touch me,’ he conceded, voice high in his throat.

The Sergeant laughed at him again. ‘I could,’ he said. ‘If I were the type to debase myself so.’

It was not a blow that should have hurt but inexplicably, it did. Booker frowned, shocked, at the floor. He knew nothing. Not of this man nor of himself. He could expect nothing. He could not chart the rules of the game they played.

‘Why were you in Bon Homme?’ The man asked him then, changing topics wildly once more.

‘I told you,’ Booker insisted. On wrote. Because he had said it a hundred times and now it came as reflex. 

‘No, dog,’ the Sergeant said. ‘I know why you were in Bon Homme.’

Booker shut his mouth up and stared at the man. He felt as though he were looking into the face of the devil. The man looked a monster in his finely starched uniform with his waxed facial hair. 

‘I know everything there is to know about you,’ he said. ‘I know how dirty you are. How yellow and slimy and maggotly you’ve grown. I know you better than anyone’s ever known you. I can see it ‘hind those big, green eyes of yours. I know your past. I know your sin.’

Booker swallowed hard.

‘I know you’re a liar and a deserter and a traitor, Dog. I know you enlisted at Bon Homme on orders from one of your Lakota war chiefs. I know you intended to sell your own men out. Your own brothers. The men you went through basic with. Tempered by the same fire what made you, Dog. Your own damn family. For what? Revenge? Some get back at General Custer. The man’s long dead. You weren’t supposed to be on this trip, Dog. You were looking for your savage brothers in them trees. You were meeting up with them to try and take that unit, steal their uniforms. You’re a treacherous snake, Dog. You’re a murderous little monster.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Booker said.

‘You should be,’ the Sergeant agreed. ‘You should be sorry. And you should show it with your confession.’

‘I,’ Booker started.

‘Yes, son,’ the man said to him, fingers running an adjusting grip along the muscles laid either side of his spine. 

His mouth slapped dryly against itself as his thoughts raced around too many tracks in his head to count. Tremors of exhaustion shook at his bones. It had to end sometime, he thought. They could only torture him so long. They’d have to kill him sometime. Better now for it to be sooner than later. 

Slowly, words formed in the buzzing cacophony of his mind and then quickly his mouth raced to produce them.

‘I was in Bon Homme to-‘

‘It’s okay, son. You can say it.’

‘I was there to deceive-‘

‘Would you say to infiltrate?’ The Sergant asked.

‘Yes,’ Booker said quickly. ‘To infiltrate so I could steal the uniforms-‘

‘And the guns, son.’

‘Yes, and the guns. To steal the uniforms and the guns.’

‘Who were you stealing them for?’

Booker paused, lips trembling. He didn’t know the answer to this question.

‘It’s okay, son,’ the Sergeant told him. ‘You can tell me. I won’t be angry with you. I’ll forgive you. You just need to confess.’

‘For my friends,’ Booker suggested uncertainly.

‘That’s right. Your friends. The Ingians.’

‘Yes,’ Booker said.

‘What tribe, boy?’

‘I don-‘

‘Shhh, yes you do.’

‘I do?’

‘You do.’

Booker took a deep breath and tried to focus. ‘Brule,’ he suggested.

‘No,’ the Sergeant said.

Dread and nervousness instantly swelled in Booker’s chest. Exploded behind the hinges of his jaw. Bile and self resentment. ‘Ogala,’ he tried.

‘That’s right.’

‘Okay,’Booker said.

‘Now can you tell me one more time?’ The Sergeant asked. ‘Why were you in Bon Homme? In your own words, now, son.’

‘I,’ Booker began, ‘was in Bon Homme to infiltrate the 1st Dakota so I could steal the uniforms and guns.’

‘That’s why you got signed onto the expedition. You went out of your way.’

‘Exactly, and I scouted ahead to meet my friends. Braves from the Ogala tribe.’

‘Good boy,’ the Sergeant said and pressed a bristly cheek against Booker’s forehead. ‘Good boy.’

Booker took a deep, calming breath. He’d figured out the rules. He’d played the game right. The spider was happy with him. He would be let out of the web or at least now devoured and it would be over.

‘Mosheim!’ The Sergeant called through the door, ‘bring that paper and one of them pencils!’

Not a few moments later, Mosheim was through the door with a sheet of paper and a fat pencil clutched in his riding gloves.

‘One more time for me, boy,’ the Sergeant instructed.

Booker nodded, almost finding himself excited to say the right thing as he opened his mouth to redeliver the confession. ‘I went to Bon Homme to infiltrate the 1st Dakota,’ he said confidently. 

Instantly Private Feaster began to write. 

‘I intentionally got myself signed onto the mission to reenforce the 7th so I could lead the party into a trap by scouting ahead to reconnect with Braves from the Ogala tribe so they could steal the weapons and uniforms and we could Trojan Horse Fort Lincoln.’

‘Atta boy,’ the Sergeant said proudly to him, laying that fatherly hand once more across the back of Booker’s neck as Mosheim continued recording the confession. ‘Don’t that feel good?’

‘Yes,’ Booker agreed. 

It had. He found himself more than excited, something closer to exhilarated, to know factually he had the answer they wanted. He knew what to say. How to please. What to do.

‘Private, if you’d retrieve my boy’s uniform,’ the Sergeant instructed as Feaster finished his writing.

Instantly, the man offered a salute and excused himself from the room.

‘You did good, son,’ the Sergeant told him. Suddenly his tone was softer. Almost welcoming. It came with a type of familiarity Booker found had been scarce in his life until this moment. 

‘I did?’ He asked.

‘Of course,’ the Sergeant told him. ‘That’s why it felt so good, isn’t it?’ 

The man’s pupils had grown fat, eating his irises into oblivion in the lowlight. He loomed intimately within close quarters so much so Booker may have compared it to standing before a family member, had he ever had family members of which to really speak.

‘You’re not my dog,’ the man said.

Panic blossomed in Booker’s chest.

‘You’re my son.’ 

And just as soon as it bloomed, a balm laid over the land to kill it.

‘You’re a good boy,’ the man assure him, drawing in even closer.

That hand came back round his neck, rubbing at the knots there and Booker relaxed into it. He was proud of himself too. Just as much as the Sergeant seemed to be.

‘Such a good-‘ another hand, skirting delicate along the line of Booker’s bare, inner thigh, ‘good boy.’

Booker felt his breath hitch nervously in his throat. ‘Sir-‘ he began, but before he said anything further the man withdrew. The door opened.

Private Mosheim Feaster entered the room carrying Booker’s uniform, folded atop his hands, boots, belts, hat and all.

‘Let’s get you out of those binds,’ the Sergeant told him, beginning short, almost brutally efficient work on the ties holding Booker in place. 

The release was a heaven. Blood gushed back into Booker’s arms and his spine groaned appreciatively as he was able to stand properly up once more. The Sergeant rubbed down his arms, smoothing blood back into long empty capillaries.

‘Put the uniform on the chair, Mos. I’ll see to the boy,’ the Sergeant instructed.

‘Yessir,’ the man agreed. 

Booker stood there, enjoying that pleasant pressure being pulled along his wrists as Mos saw himself back out.

‘How are you feeling, son?’ The man asked.

‘Better,’ Booker admitted.

‘Good,’ the Sergeant told him. The mans boot clicked between Booker’s feet as he leaned in to press a whiskered kiss against the top of his head. Booker felt a wave of glowing pride tempered only by a distant dread that swept him. ‘Good boy.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Booker said. 

‘Lets get these clothes on you,’ the man suggested. 

Booker let himself be steered toward the chair he’d first woken on. 

‘Sit,’ the man said as he fetched Booker’s effects from the seat.

It was the easiest to follow order that Booker had received from the man since meeting him. The room was dead quiet, sound strung on the taught lines so intimately that Booker was nigh assaulted by the fabric shushing of the man’s trousers as he knelt at the foot of the chair. Strong hands rooted through the pile to find Booker’s own pants and shook them of their folds.

‘Left foot, son,’ the man ordered, holding the trousers out as though Booker were a child he meant to dress. 

And trepeditly, Booker did as told. Nothing odd happened. Nothing strange. The man simply helped him into his pants one leg at a time and then tugged them up to Booker’s knees before pulling him off the chair to lean against a broad chest as they skirted the outsides of his thighs. 

‘Haven’t fitted your uniform, have you, son?’ The man asked as he fastened the buttons and found the band of the waist loose to fit.

‘S’what a belt’s for,’ Booker said.

The Sergeant clicked his tongue against his teeth disapprovingly. ‘I’ll have it seen to,’ he promised as he grabbed Booker’s belt from the pile.

Booker didn’t understand what that meant but the man’s voice was reassuring as he was eased back down onto the chair seat.

‘I’ll have you lookin’ as well as you might had you been born to better circumstances,’ the man assured him as he slid the shirt back onto Booker’s shoulders. 

Booker felt the ghost of a laugh rattle into his throat and die there. 

‘And won’t you be handsome then?’ The man asked.

‘Sure,’ Booker said nonchalantly. Futilely and perhaps hubretically he decided at this point to take control of doing his own buttons up and caught a sharp slap on the knuckles for it. ‘Shit,’ he swore as the Sergeant continued dressing him.

‘Got a spirit can’t be tempered, don’cha?’

‘S’pose,’ Booker agreed, distantly. 

‘Like one of them wild mustangs them Ingians ride without breaking,’ the man continued. 

Booker couldn’t find the energy to meet his eyes but he brandished a glare at the floor regardless.

‘You like being ridden, boy?’ The Sergeant asked him.

‘Can’t say I’ve had much chance to play horse, sir,’ Booker said.

The Sergeant laughed as he tugged the standard issue yellow bandanna round the back of Booker’s neck. ‘That could be changed, Soldier.’

This was another statement Booker tossed out with the bathwater, finding it too confusing to contemplate. ‘Am I free to go?’ he asked the man.

‘No, son,’ the Sergeant said, shoving the boots back onto Booker’s feet.

Despite this response being no surprise at all, Booker still felt his chest fall with the sound of that denial. 

‘Am I gonna hang?’ He asked, sure of the next answer.

‘No, son,’ the man repeated.

Booker blinked at him blankly.

‘Ain’t you come to reenforce the 7th?’ The Sergeant asked him. ‘Ain’t that what you said so many times?’

‘But you sa-‘

‘Son,’ the Sergeant said, laying a hand once more on Booker’s shoulder. ‘Stop. You think too much. I’m here to guide you so you don’t have to do that.’

‘Oh.’

‘That’s right,’ the Sergeant told him, pulling him back up off the chair once more. ‘And now I’m gonna introduce you to your new troop, boy. How’s that sound?’

‘That sounds nice,’ Booker said blankly.

He was offered a bristle haired smile.

‘Sure does,’ the man continued assuring him as he finished the task of dressing Booker like a doll by folding his jacket sleeves up to scratch under his riding gloves. ‘They’ll be your new family. Your brothers in arms.’

‘Yeah,’ Booker agreed.

‘So you just come along now.’

‘’Course,’ Booker agreed, taking an offered hand and letting the Sergeant lead him from the room.


End file.
